Some time ago I ventured to print a monograph on the Avars in the Journal of the Asiatic Society. I should now like to continue the story by analyzing the difficult ethnological and historical problems involved in discriminating the races which occupied the Steppes of South-eastern Europe before the arrival of the Avars. The question has exercised many inquirers, nor does it seem to me that a final and definite answer can be reached, but we can at all events secure a tentative solution of the problem.

The occasion of the Bab's writing this Commentary is thus described in the Tárikh-i-Jadid (BBP. 5, f. 106a; Or. 2942, ff. 103a–103b):

The subject of the present paper is the translation of one of the most interesting and important tablets that have been discovered within the last twenty years—interesting not only from a linguistic point of view, but also as casting new light on the history of Western Asia, about 1500 years before our era, and as showing the manners of the age and the political relations of Egypt with Asiatic countries. It also informs us of the language spoken in Armenia and in Syria, and of the extent of the Hittite dominions before the fall of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty.

By the Scientific Expedition to the Northern Etbai, despatched by his Highness the Khedive in the beginning of the year, that part of the eastern desert of Egypt which lies south of a line between Kina and Kosair and reaches rather below the twenty-fourth parallel of latitude, was rapidly examined and surveyed. The map is in the hands of the engraver of the Royal Geographical Society; the geology exhibited in a map and sections is before the Geological Society; and a map of the antiquities is attached to the present memoir. The country embraces an area of 23,000 square miles of mountain and desert, and is called by the inhabitants the Northern Etbai.

1. The reasons which induce me to preserve the spelling Hiuen-Tsang instead of adopting the newly-proposed Yüan Chwang are that the latter is erroneous and without any standing whatever, while the other, besides its long acceptance by European scholars, is more true to history.

The original of the document here translated (K 4806) is unfortunately muchinjured, and the text presents great—Dr. Jensen has said insuperable—difficulties to the translator. Dr. Sayce has attempted a version of Col. I. in his Hibbert Lectures, p. 495. Dr. Jensen has made some good remarks on the piece, and given a version of Col. I. 8–15 in his Kosmologie (pp. 91 sqq). A closer studyof the entire text reveals important points of contact between this document and others, published in the same volume of inscriptions, from which I have attempted to extract a connected sense elsewhere (Glimpses of Babylonian Religion, P.S.B.A., Feb. 1892). These will be noticed in due course. In general, it may be said that, in spite of a few still enigmatical expressions, it is clear that we have in this interesting relic of Babylonian religion an Office or Liturgy, in which rubrics or ritual directions are interspersed with prayers and invocations of gods.

About 100 members assembled for the preliminary meeting on Sunday night, the 4th September, in the Whitehall Rooms of the H6tel Metropole, where refreshments were served. The Chairman and some other members of the Organizing Committee received the guests.